


colors and promises

by badwolfbadwolf



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Miscarriage, Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-06 23:03:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3151622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badwolfbadwolf/pseuds/badwolfbadwolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You don’t understand," Stiles says woodenly, months later. And Derek doesn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	colors and promises

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sad story and I'm not even sure why I'm posting it. I'm sorry.
> 
> Title from A Thousand Years by Christina Perri.

They hadn’t really thought about it much, but one weekend they were supposed to go out drinking with Scott and Allison so Stiles decides to take a test for fun.  Two pink lines appear, one thicker than the other, and he has to read the instructions three times before he bursts from the bathroom, yelling for Derek at the top of his lungs.

“Really?” Derek asks, voice hushed and eyes wide when he skids to a stop and sees what Stiles is waving around.  He spins Stiles in a circle and kisses him silly, until they’re both laughing and then Derek’s tearing up a little, and then Stiles is too, and then he’s punching Derek in the arm and wiping at his own eyes with trembling hands.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, his voice caught in his throat, warm and thick.

Derek hears Stiles lie to Scott on the phone and they stay in instead, but Stiles seems thrilled to do so.  They’ll have to wait to see anyone in person for a bit, because Stiles is a terrible liar and Scott would hear his heartbeat trip a mile away.  The news is secret for the moment, exciting, amazing, and just for them.  

***

Derek and Stiles aren’t married, but they’ve been living together since Stiles graduated college, and a little before then, too, if you counted summer breaks and weekends.  And suddenly the loft seems like one giant baby death trap.

“You can’t even put a gate on a circular staircase,” Stiles exclaims one day when Derek comes home from work.  He has a million tabs open on baby-proofing and birthing and daycare options, and Derek smiles fondly and kisses Stiles on the forehead, not even responding.  He’s grown used to Stiles’ spouting, preferring to wait until he’s gone off for a good minute or two before putting in his own two cents.  Which Stiles usually ignores.

“When do you want to tell your dad?” Derek asks, heading straight for the freezer and pulling out the pudding pops.

Stiles gives him a guilty look from the side of his eyes, tearing open the wrapper and licking at the top of the popsicle to avoid having to speak.  Of course, that’s the only time Stiles gets silent.

“Was he happy?” Derek asks, toeing off his shoes and snuggling down next to Stiles.  It’s warm in the loft, the afternoon sun heating the room and the air conditioner not quite strong enough to cool the large space, but it feels good to be next to Stiles and feeling his skin and breathing the same air.

“He was ecstatic.”

Derek grins and gives Stiles a sticky kiss, licking at the chocolate at the corner of his lips.  They forget their pudding pops until they start dripping down onto their hands, and then they laugh and Stiles laps the drips up off Derek’s fingers and moves to straddle Derek’s legs with practiced ease.

“Let me just finish this and then I’ll blow you,”  he promises, lapping at the bottom of his ice cream before Derek decides to hell with it and tosses both pudding pops in the garbage before shepherding Stiles upstairs.

***

“You’re getting a little chunky around the mid-section,” Derek says with a good-natured poke at Stiles’ belly.  Stiles swats at him, completely missing, not quite awake yet.

“Jerk,” he says, but he pulls Derek closer, trapping him down to the mattress with long limbs and heavy kisses.  “Too early for wakey.”

Derek was going to go for a run, but he supposes he can miss it just this once.  He lets his hand curl around Stiles’ flat stomach, wondering if it’s a boy or a girl growing tiny arms and feet inside.

***

It’s the second night in a row Stiles has been heaving his guts into the downstairs toilet.  Apparently the smell of shrimp  _and_  orange chicken are both no-gos.  

“I thought people were joking about this part,” Stiles says from his spot on the tile floor, face pale and lips pink.

Derek thinks Stiles looks beautiful but knows it would be kind of weird to say that right now.  “Do you want some crackers?  Aren’t bland foods supposed to be helpful?”

Stiles wipes at his lips with the back of his hand, propping himself up against the wall and seeming to think about it.  “Nah, just.  I’ll be okay in a minute.”

Derek nods, a little unsettled, because he wants to provide for Stiles, for his  _mate_.  He thinks Stiles has maybe lost weight, but he doesn’t say anything about it.  Stiles gets really defensive about those types of things.  Derek moves off to the kitchen, going through the pantry and tossing anything that even slightly resembles orange chicken.

***

It’s the middle of the night when Stiles wakes him, the air cold and Stiles’ hands shaking.

“Something’s wrong,” he says, and Derek feels his heart freeze.

The drive to the emergency room is almost in silence, except Stiles is crying but trying so hard not to.  All Derek can think is that he’s in his old sweatpants.  These are the sweatpants he’s wearing when he and Stiles are in the ER, waiting to go into the ultrasound room.  These will forever be the sweatpants he was wearing when he found out.

It’s like Derek had known, from the moment Stiles had woken him up with clammy hands.  But to see it there, to see it on the ultrasound.  To  _not_  see it.

No heartbeat.  No nothing.  No baby.

“I don’t understand,” Stiles says, voice small and eyes red.  And Derek says nothing, because he doesn’t understand either, but it feels terrible and wrong and he can’t do anything but squeeze Stiles’ hand and stare there blankly.

***

They lie under the covers, silent.  And he’s still wearing those sweatpants and thinking that yesterday there was a little life there.  And now it’s not there.  How can this be.

***

There’s no cards for this kind of thing, no way to tell people at work.  Stiles asks Derek to tell the few people who knew, Scott included, because he can’t bear to do it himself.  They’re home for a few days, alone, silent, despondent.  They don’t even have an ultrasound picture; it’d been too early.

When Derek goes back to work he lies, saying he had the flu.  He doesn’t know why he can’t tell, but he just can’t, his mind a blur, the real world surreal, like he’s underwater and trying hard to breathe but if he does he’ll just drown.  

He’s grateful no one knows, but as the days go on, he’s resentful of it.  Why isn’t anyone acknowledging what happened?  Why do they have to keep going when inside he just wants to curl up in their blankets and never ever get up again?

***

"You don’t understand," Stiles says woodenly, months later. And Derek doesn’t. He doesn’t understand why Stiles can’t stop crying, or why he can’t be hopeful for them to try again. Because it will happen. It has to happen.

The doctor says they have to wait so they do.  Months of sex that ends with pulling out. A reminder of what happened and what can’t happen now. Stiles stops crying every day but sometimes his eyes get glassy when he sees diaper commercials or a little girl with her tiny hand resting tightly inside her mother’s.

And then there’s the time when they’re at Cora’s and she turns to them and smiles and says “Guess what? ” And they both are happy for them, they really are, but Derek can see it in the set of Stiles’ jaw. That he’s trying not to cry.

"Are you alright?" Derek says to him in the hall later, once he’s been able to get away.

"Just don’t say anything to me," Stiles whispers. And Derek doesn’t understand again, but he doesn’t say anything. He holds Stiles all night that night and let’s him get his shirt wet with tears and snot.

"I’m fine," Stiles tells him one day, and it sounds right and true, but there’s something different about him.  He’s changed, a part of him gone completely, his smile a little tighter. And they don’t talk about it anymore because Derek doesn’t understand and Stiles has learned this.  But the world has changed and they’re older now and they both know it. 

Stiles picks the wildflowers behind his dad’s house and makes pretty bouquets for their industrial countertop. He throws them away before they die.  Derek plays with Cora’s son and thinks of the little blue blanket tucked away in the back of their closet that they’d bought when they’d first found out.

It doesn’t get easier but life keeps going on, easy or not.

"I love you," Derek whispers in the middle of the night just before he’s drifting off to sleep.

"I know," Stiles says quietly. They listen to each other breathe, the heat kicking on in their one bedroom loft because they never did need to buy that house. "It’s enough," Stiles says.

But Derek knows it’s not.


End file.
